


Zarosian Road Trip

by Laetitia_Laetitii



Category: Runescape
Genre: AU, Gen, Zarosian Road Trip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-23
Updated: 2017-07-10
Packaged: 2018-07-11 13:47:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7054261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laetitia_Laetitii/pseuds/Laetitia_Laetitii
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zarosian Road Trip, a crack AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Trouble with Houseguests

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ”What I was thinking about,” Wahisietel said, “is that we could all go some way north together. Let the two of you see some Fifth-Age sights. Get a chance to practice your Common. Fit in with Modern Society.”

            After a while, the little house in Nardah began to feel too small for the three of them.

            First it had been just Azzanadra. One night in the summer of 169 — after some nine thousand years of absence— the little twinkling signal of his presence had reappeared on the little green screen of Wahisietel’s racial radar. A few hours later, the cobweb-covered erstwhile Pontifex Maximus of the Zarosian Empire had barged in through his front door without knocking, and had proceeded to claim asylum in Wahisietel’s bedroom.

            Then, after a few weeks of somewhat awkward rooming, two more signals had appeared on the display in his head. Akthanakos and Enakhra — both missing in action and presumed dead since before the war — had re-emerged in the desert. The following day the former had turned up in Nardah, and invited himself for an indefinite stay. As time went by and neither of them showed any indication of leaving, the last house to the north seemed to slowly but surely shrink in size.

            Let it be said that Wahisietel was as fond of his guests as any Mahjarrat will be of another, but he was also a solitary and territorial creature by nature, not to mention much accustomed to the peace and quiet of his bachelor pad. It was all very well that his brothers were free — and that he was no longer the only Zarosian at large — but it would have been ever so much more pleasant for him had the others gone and enjoyed their newfound freedom somewhere else.  

            Firstly, there was the matter of space. He had put Azzanadra on the spare mattress. He had hung up the hammock for Akthanakos. But by then, it had become quite impossible to live comfortably, leave alone concentrate on his work. Furthermore, he thought to himself, if any more long-lost Brethren showed up on his door (here, for some reason, he always imagined uncharacteristic demands of seed-cake and declarations of "at your service"), he'd have to put them on the roof.

            Apart from that there were the problems of culture shock. To be precise, his two guests had been trapped out of time in the era of the Zarosian Empire, and they had re-emerged into a world where even the name of their god wasn’t known. They had never lived in a world where the Mahjarrat were unknown, or where magic was uncommon. Neither of them knew how to lie low, how to live in human form, or how to live in human society; one of them thought he was a camel while the other thought he was next from a god —

            At this point, Wahisietel usually forced his thought process to shut down. Then he refilled his pipe and went to smoke it alone a sand dune. But as days passed, he realized he either had to do something about the situation or decamp permanently to the trackless wastes.

            There had been incidents, after all. For instance, there had been the time Akthanakos had held a long, hearty, and very public discussion on market fluctuations with the water trader’s camel. And the time Azzanadra had almost set fire to a man standing outside the bedroom window. And then the very peculiar occurrence involving all the goats facing northwards at noon, which Shiratti the Custodian had thankfully accredited to Scarabas the beetle-god.

            Nonetheless, People Were Talking. And when talk got going in a one-ox, closed-for-the-weekend place like Nardah, it never died down until it had claimed a victim.

            The sacred town of Elidinis was one of those quaint, ancient, and picturesque villages where anyone whose family has not lived there for fifty generations was considered a foreigner, and where deviation of any kind was looked upon with the kindness generally given to cockroach infestations. Wahisietel had arrived there almost four decades ago — a scholar; the son of a Kharidian mother and a Pollnivnean father, a stranger in a strange land — and had over the years managed to create himself quite a comfortable little life. He collected and studied religious texts. He interpreted hieroglyphs. He wrote and read letters for illiterate townsfolk at a very reasonable rate, and had occasionally taught some enterprising individuals to read the modern syllabic script.

            He liked the climate. He liked the people. He very much wanted to continue it for a few more years. But it was becoming all too clear that if he did not get rid of his housemates, he’d face the prospect of being ridden out of town on a rail.

            “Houseguests and fish,” he thought to himself. “You have to throw them out after three days, and for the same reasons.” And so he began to plot for a way to gently dispose of them.

            ***

            The solution occurred to him sooner than he had hoped for, during a teatime conversation with Akthanakos that night. The two of them were sitting in silence at Wahisietel’s desk, sharing a plate of almond cakes. For a pair of men eating freshly-baked pastries, they looked surprisingly gloomy.

            The last incident had been quite bad.

            An hour earlier, Miss Meskhenet the herbalist — who for years had carried a small, damp, and rather hopeless torch for the enigmatic Mr Wise — had shown up. Ostensibly it was to bring a plate of cakes and a pouch of her special pipe blend. In reality, Wahisietel knew that she had wanted to show that at least _she_ continued to approve of him (and by extension, of his eccentric friends), no matter what the local gossips said.

            It had not gone well.

            Azzanadra, who treated all offers of food as poisoning attempts, had taken one look at the poor woman and had stalked off muttering something about plebeian yokels. Miss Meskhenet had been quite offended, but at the end Wahisietel had managed to explain that his friend was merely unaccustomed to society, and had got her to sit down. They had been chatting entirely normally when without a warning, Akthanakos — who had been bathing in the bedroom — had suddenly barged in, wearing nothing but soapsuds and a dung-eating grin, and Miss Meskhenet had run out of the house screaming bloody murder.

            “This is hardly going to work out, is it?” said Wahisietel gloomily, as he helped himself to another almond cake. He rarely ate, unless it was necessary to keep up appearances. However, some things were too good to pass by, even if he disliked the business of “letting food run through” as he called it. Besides, he somehow felt it a duty towards Miss Meskhenet, though he could not have explained the logic behind the sentiment if asked.

            “What will not?” Akthanakos asked rather absent-mindedly. He was spreading honey on an almond cake, which took up most of his concentration.

            “This,” Wahisietel said. “You two being here. Teleporting in and out at all hours, shapeshifting in plain sight, talking to goats like this was the Forum of Senntisten. People are onto you. First they’ll be onto you and then they’ll be on to me. And then it will be Musa Point all over again.” He shuddered.

            “I do my best,” said Akthanakos, a touch defensively.

            “You _try,_ ” Wahisietel replied through gritted teeth. “And a fat lot of good it will do me when the people come in with their pitchforks. Then look at Azzanadra,” he continued, now on a roll. “He’s not used to having to do a damn thing he doesn’t want to and has no idea how to start. I mean, he’s not going to get along with these Fifth-Age people. He’s accustomed to being addressed with fear and trembling, and now he has to go up to the dig site in Misthalin and negotiate with Saradominists about the right to break into the ruins of his own house. Can you imagine how that one’s going to go?”

            “Like a wingless icyene,” said Akthanakos cheerfully, not paying him much heed.

            “Him and his airs and graces,” Wahisietel went on. “I just know that he’s going to show up there demanding to be let in, and he’ll lose his temper and end up getting arrested. He’s not even _trying_ to fit in. Because _that_ would mean he’d have to admit that in this day and age, he’s the Pontifex Maximus of Sweet Fanny Adams and no-one owes him a damned thing.” 

            “Mmm-hmm,” Akthanakos replied. Having finished glazing a second cake, he pressed the two together to make sandwich, which resulted in Wahisietel’s cherrywood desk receiving a fresh varnish of honey.

            “You know, you could use a few pointers yourself,” said his long-suffering host, getting up to fetch a rag.

            “About what?”

            “About behaving like a human. A Fifth-Age human. Perhaps even a Fifth-Age human who wasn’t brought up in a barrel.” (Akthanakos, unwilling to let a good thing go to waste, was now spooning up the spilled honey with his forefinger.)

            Right at that moment there was a violent shriek outside, and two seconds later a fantastically sunburned Azzanadra entered, slamming the door shut behind him.

            “Is the woman gone?” he barked, glancing about as if he was entering the scene of a crime.

            “Quite gone,” replied Wahisietel. “What was the screaming about?”

            “Good,” said Azzanadra. “Insolent peasant.”  
            “What was the screaming about,” Wahisietel repeated, a terrible suspicion rising in his mind.

            “Pest control,” said Azzanadra. He glanced about as if he had lost something, and having located _The Grammar of The Common Tongue,_ headed for the bedroom muttering something about heathens.

            “ _AZZANADRA, WHAT WAS THE—”_

“That neighbour of yours was lurking outside again,” said Azzanadra airily. “I made him think he was an ostrich.”

            There was a brief, very pregnant pause. Then Wahisietel spoke.

            “Before you go,” he said, his voice suddenly very low and soft, “I’d like a word with you both.”

Akthanakos looked up, having licked the desk throughout the previous exchange.

Azzanadra stopped at the doorway.

            “Sit,” Wahisietel said. _“We need to talk.”_

            After a few seconds’ delay — during which Azzanadra demonstrated that he was not obeying an order, but had merely reached the conclusion that he suddenly wished to sit — the third Mahjarrat claimed a chair by the table.

            “About?” he said, his eyes drifting towards the plate of cakes as if it were a rabid chinchompa.

            “About the two of you,” said Wahisietel. “About the two of you being here.”

            “What about us?” asked Akthanakos the wholly innocuous.

            Several ideas passed through Wahisietel’s mind in quick succession. These involved concepts and phrases such as “cleaning rota”, “sharing rent”, and “dig yourselves a pit and jump in it”, but at the end, what came out of his mouth was quite different. It was something practical and feasible. Something that would benefit them all as individuals, and the Zarosian faction as a whole. And like all his best plans, it was something he made up as he went along.

            “I’ve been thinking,” he said, when he knew he had the others’ attention. “I know the two of you both have things to do elsewhere. Azzanadra, you’re going to Senntisten. Akthanakos, you said you’re going to Ghorrock. You both have business to attend to, but _I could say,_ you perhaps don’t know very well how to fit in with modern society.” Azzanadra bristled visibly. Akthanakos blinked like a small furry animal in headlights. But when neither interrupted him, Wahisietel continued.

                ”The fact of the matter is,” he lied, “that I have some business in Varrock. Something I’ll have to take care of fairly soon. What I was thinking about is that since we are all going the same way, we could travel there together. You two could see some Fifth Age sights, practice your Common, learn about the modern-day customs and manners...”

            He looked at the two of them for a while. When neither said anything, he finished his spiel.

“Or alternatively, I can kick you both out of the house, go on my way alone, and you two can do what the hell ever you want.”

            “Road trip,” said Akthanakos quickly. For all his faults, he knew the better offer out of two.

            “Road trip,” Azzanadra conceded finally, with all the air of a general laying down his arms.

            “Fantastic,” said Wahisietel cheerfully. “A road trip it is, then. A Zarosian road trip. A journey of discovery for the Zarosian Mahjarrat.”

            “Does that mean,” blurted Akthanakos, “that we should invite your brother as well?”

            They all considered this for a few seconds, letting various scenarios play out on the dirty grindhouse screens of their minds.

            “No,” said Wahisietel bluntly.

            “No,” echoed Azzanadra.

            “No, said Akthanakos, casting the final vote.

            Outside, there was strange noise, as if someone was running about flapping their arms fiercely. Wahisietel considered this, and began to mentally compose and explanation for the event. Yet, even if the incident was not connected to him, it was clear that the time for his exit was about right.

            “We’ll leave at dawn."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so it begins.  
> This chapter will need some serious post-editing, and all feedback is much appreciated.


	2. Three Men and a Camel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Three's a company, three and a camel is a cavalry.

 

                At quarter to one the following afternoon, Wahisietel and Azzanadra were standing in the town square with their luggage. Midday’s blaze was still at full force, which meant that the rest of the villagers were relaxing in the cool comfort of their homes, where they could enjoy a brief respite, and occasionally peek out of a window at the two loons frying themselves in the sun. However, as no-one thought them entertaining enough to actually venture outside for a gawk, the following conversation went entirely unheard.

                “What is _keeping_ him,” asked Azzanadra through gritted teeth, for what was probably the fourth time in twenty minutes. His hat-brim was pulled low over his eyes. His arms were folded across his chest, his hands were balled into white-knuckled fists.

                “I don’t know,” murmured Wahisietel, his voice ominously soft. “But if he doesn’t show up soon, we’ll have to put off departure until tomorrow.”

                “I’m going to go and check—”

                “Five minutes. We’ll wait another five minutes, and if he doesn’t turn up, we’ll fetch him. Regardless of what he’s doing out there.” Silence fell again, and the two Mahjarrat went on standing motionless and alert while dust swirled about their boots.

                Their attempt to decamp had not gone well. First there had been the standard issue travel troubles of cocks not crowing on time; packing, unpacking and repacking, and burning breakfasts that no-one wanted anyway. Then, at some point during the hunt for the fabled beast My Other Sock, Akthanakos had sneaked out of the house and teleported away. For the past three hours, his presence imprint had been zigzagging about the desert like a demented housefly.

                “There he goes again,” Wahisietel muttered, as the presence vanished from the ruins of Ullek and re-appeared in the salt plains near Menaphos. “Zapping about. And it’s not as if he can’t jolly well feel us here. He knows we’re waiting for him. He could have at least told—”

                _Flash._ The presence had moved again, this time to the Jaleustrophos pyramid.

                “Fancying a bit of exercise, are we?” Wahisietel continued. “He’s going to teleport to the town again, I just know it, he’s going to teleport right to the square, and guess who’ll have to explain it away—”

                _Flash._ Near the river.

                _“Flashing about in public, I say—”_

                _Flash._ The Rift west of Nardah—

                _“Like the Second Age never ended—”_

 _Flash._ Right outside Nardah.

                _“For the love of—”_

Many things happened at once. The presence blinked one more time, a loud bellow rang through the quiet square, and from the alley behind the blacksmith’s forge bolted one of the town’s indestructible goats, mad with fright. The poor animal sprinted across the marketplace like an ill-tempered missile, disappeared behind the mayor’s house, and was never seen again.

                Then, as the two Mahjarrat watched, from the cloud of dust by the forge emerged a fig— no. Two figures. Very definitely two figures. The first one was Akthanakos in his human form, clad in the saffron-yellow robes and face-covering headdress of a desert nomad. The second one was a camel. A huge, vicious-looking Bactrian camel with dishevelled fur and hooves like soup-plates. The reek hit them from the other side of the square.

                “Sorry I kept the two of you waiting,” said Akthanakos cheerfully. “But I couldn’t just go without telling the others, or asking if anyone else wanted to tag along. At any rate, this is Hatshepsut. She’s coming with us to see the Saradominist lands.”

                “That’s a _camel_ ,” said Wahisietel, Legatus Obvious. Somehow, the sheer astonishment had wiped away his previous, ready-to-explode ire.

                “ _Ugthanki,_ ” Akthanakos corrected tactfully. “And she’s a friend of mine.”

                “Well, we can use that thing as a beast of burden,” said Azzanadra dismissively, eyeing the newest member of their company up and down. At these words the camel’s head snapped towards him, and it fixed him with its single, maliciously glinting eye.

                “Hatshepsut has _graciously_ agreed to transport our luggage,” said Akthanakos. “And us too, should the situation require it. A word of caution, though. While my friend only speaks Ugthanki and some Dromedarian, she’s quiet apt at picking up tone and inflection. Mind your manners, gentlemen.” This was seemingly directed at Azzanadra, who appeared to be locked in a staring contest with the camel. Then, through some unspoken agreement, both stood down and appeared to ignore each other completely. The words _I’ve got your number_ hung in the air like an invisible battle-flag.

                “So,” said Akthanakos, “let’s get going then, shall we?”

                ***

                Some twenty minutes later, they started out. It bode well for him, Wahisietel thought, that the townspeople were coming out to say goodbye and wave. As they made their way through the dusty lanes, a neighbour would occasionally emerge from a doorway to shake hands with them.

                “A few weeks,” he told one relieved face after another. “Few weeks, a month at the most. No, my friends are not coming back. Yes, I’m entirely sure. Yes, that’s a ugthanki.”

                He spotted Mayor Awusah and Shiratti, the custodian of the Temple of Elidinis. Here was Seddu the blacksmith, there the Pollnivnean water trader. And at the very edge of town was Miss Meskhenet, who waved more vigorously than anyone, and occasionally stopped to blow her nose daintily on an embroidered handkerchief. Nevertheless, Wahisietel did notice that she was decidedly avoiding eye contact with Akthanakos. _The regular crowd,_ he mused to himself. He wasn’t leaving a minute too soon, and eventually he’d be welcome back. Alone.

                As the last of the crooked mudbrick houses were left behind, he glanced wistfully at his own little abode. _Home,_ he thought, for one who had known many homes. The little house with its odour of mint-tea and clay, the ancient desk, the orderly bookshelves —his head spun around for a double-take.

                There had been one face missing from the crowd, he had noticed it but had not remembered…

                “Azzanadra,” he said aloud, his voice measuredly level.

                “Yes,” the other Mahjarrat replied without looking at him.

                “There is a man behind my house.”

                “Isn’t there always?”

                “He’s got his head buried in the sand.”

                “I’m not one to judge what a man does in his spare time. Unless it’s peeking at decent people bathing.”

                _“Do something about it.”_

“If you insist so,” Azzanadra sighed, flicking his hand as if to dismiss a troublesome supplicant at an audience. Somewhere behind them, there was a sound of fervent retching and coughing, which soon was lost in the wind.

                “It’s not as if they even do that,” muttered Wahisietel. “It’s just a popular misconception that ostriches bury their heads in sand.” As they walked along, he had produced from his satchel a map of the Kharidian Peninsula.

                “I don’t figure we want to go to Pollnivneach,” he said, his tone now much more conciliatory. Too much of a hassle. But according to this, we can simply head north along the river, then cross over at the bridge near Uzer.”

                “Sounds simple enough,” remarked Akthanakos, who had never learned not to tempt the fates. “It’s going to be a breeze.”

                Then they reached the crest of the Big Dune. Behind them were the miniature houses of Nardah, familiar and comforting. In front of them were the undulating dunes of the Kharidian Desert, stretching as far as the eye could see under an immense and cloudless sky. Taking one more wistful glance behind, they set out to descend the slope to begin their great Voyage Out.

               


	3. Al-Kharid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The gang heads up to Al-Kharid.  
> Mainly low-brow sex jokes.

                Two weeks later, as the sun begun its descent from the zenith towards the distant Karamjan Sea, the Mahjarrat saw the Shantay Hills appear on the horizon.

                They came into being gradually, blue and spectral at first, but gaining substance with every passing mile. The dim silhouettes turned into solid matter, warm colours separating from the shadowy azure, while somewhere far beyond, the dark smokestacks of Al-Kharid rose to the luminous sky.

                A few hours before sundown the three of them passed through the decaying crags of Shantay Pass. The ancient gateway was left behind, and soon they found themselves in a narrow gorge that wound its way through the rock.

                “Only a little further,” Wahisietel called over his shoulder as they made their way through the twisting path. “At the end of the pass there’s a place where you can see the city. See, it’s right around this—”

                There was a brief, stunned silence from ahead, followed by a string frantically muttered curses.              

                “ _Ohbuggerbuggerbuggerthey’reholdingthedamnedthingearlythisyearbugger —”_

                As the others caught up with him on the narrow ledge overlooking the city, they could instantly see what Wahisietel had meant.

                Below them, bathed in evening’s gentle twilight, lay the rooftops of Al-Kharid. High upon a steep hill, the domes and spires of the Palace glowed like sunset clouds, their multi-coloured banners streaming in the wind. Around it spread the roofs of  mudbrick houses, broken into a maze by endless little lanes and alleys filled to the brim with—

                “Cor,” said Akthanakos, “place look awfully crowded.”

                                The Mahjarrat looked down in silence, observing what appeared to be a city-sized gridlock. As far as they could see, the streets of Al-Kharid were filled with a swirling and rushing sea of heads, above which litters and sedan chairs surfed like silk-covered dinghies set adrift.Ox-carts stood motionless at every corner, their drivers screaming curses at each other, their animals, and the pedestrians casually clambering over their loaded wagons. Currently a cart finally lurched forward, T-boned a man on a dromedary, and sent five blocks’ worth of traffic into a deeper level of transportation hell on the spot.

                “It bloody well does,” groaned Wahisietel, “because it bloody well is. It bloody well is because it is the bloody Festival of the bloody Rising Waters. Huge religious thing, has to do with the rivers and their flooding and whatnot, buggered if I can explain — they hold it on a different day every different year according to the bloody lunar calendar, and I bloody well forgot—”

                “And now all of Al-Kharid is here?” asked Azzanadra.

                “All of Al-Kharid,” Wahisietel replied morosely, “and Menaphites from the twin cities, and Bedapins, and everyone’s kin who live abroad, and northerner tourists and their cousins and neighbours and watercarriers and hairdressers and—”

                “ _Et alii_ ,” Azzanadra concluded.

                “Him too,” said Akthanakos, patting Wahisietel on the shoulder.

                “What?!”

                “Tu quoque, amice.”     

                “If you make that pun ever again,” Wahisietel replied without turning around, “I swear to Mother Mah I’ll teleport you back to Freneskae.” He paused for a while, counting quietly but not inaudibly to ten under his breath. “Now, gentlemen,” he continued, sounding uncharacteristically chipper, “let us proceed to the famed Al-Kharid, and see if there’s a single damned vacant room left in the place.”

                ***

                An hour later, the answer was becoming very clear.

                Having been turned away from six sold-out inns in a row, the Mahjarrat discussed strategy as they pushed their way through a busy side street.

                “Last room sold out last week, last floor space sold out yesterday,” Wahisietel repeated. “That’s what the landlord said. We can still check the backstreets behind the palace, though. The accommodations may not be as nice, but least we’ll have a roof on our heads.”

                 The three of them looked about, all silently taking note of the deepening shadows and the ever shabbier houses lining the alley.

                “We can always try,” said Akthanakos the Optimist. “Look! There’s another one.” He was pointing at a lopsided edifice someway ahead, with the word “inn” scrawled in red paint on the cracking plaster over the doorway. “We could go and ask there.”

                Through an unspoken agreement — one that perhaps had to do with the well-honed survival instincts of Mahjarrat — Wahisietel had taken on the role of a representative. The others could just as well learn Fifth Age etiquette later in some place with less people, he told himself — somewhere with less people, and less buildings, and perhaps no flammable materials around.

                Consequently, while he entered the inn to enquire about vacant rooms, the others lingered by the door in wait. Muffled voices carried out from inside, but the entrance hall seemed to have a strange echo, and as a result they could only hear their friend’s half of his conversation with the innkeeper.

                “Good evening,” they heard Wahisietel say in Kharidian. “I was wondering if you had any rooms left for the night.”

                There was a reply, but the two Mahjarrat could not make out the words.

                “Yes,” came Wahisietel’s voice again. “One room.”

                “Of course for the whole night.”

                “No, I don’t need to see them, whatever you have will do for us.”

                “Yes, there’s four of us. Me, my two friends, and a ugthanki.”

                “Illegal? What do you mean illegal?”

                _“Then why in the blazes does it say ‘inn’ on your bloody sign?!”_

The curtain was swept aside and Wahisietel stalked out, fuming quietly.

                “Inn,” he muttered to himself. “Inn.” And “Hang all Kharidians.”

                “I take it they didn’t have any vacant rooms?” asked Azzanadra, as they set out along the street again.

                “No,” said Wahisietel through gritted teeth. “No vacant rooms. They only had rooms with other people in them already.”

                _“Alii?”_ asked Akthanakos.

 _“_ Alii, aliae, alia.”

                “Blimey.”

                ***

                By the time darkness began to fall, the Mahjarrat found themselves standing at the edge of a small market square. Most of the daytime traders had already gone home, and the night people were opening up for business. The scent of honey and roast almonds drifted from the stalls of sweet vendors, while buskers and fire breathers set up shop between their stands. As they watched the scene, a man organized a game of poker on the pavement, was chased away by the patrol, and quietly returned to resume his trade five minutes later.

                “Looks like we’re sleeping in the street,” said Wahisietel resignedly.

                “I’m not,” said Azzanadra, who had never faced the prospect in his life and wasn’t about to start. “There’s got to be something else. There’s always something else. For one, you could have just let me—”

                “If I had let you,” replied Wahisietel, “half the proprietors in this city would have to wear masks for the rest of their lives.”

                “And we’d have a room for the night,” said Azzanadra spitefully. “Besides,” he continued, “there is no need to bring that one up all the time. I do something once, and people talk as if I have a habit.”

                “It was a pretty big once, Az.”

                “Water under the bridge.”

                “Cardinal Quintus might have disagreed.”

                “May have, might have,” said Azzanadra, “but doesn’t any more, on the account of him being dead for the past nine thousand years. We could gamble,” he said, gesturing at the circle of people around the man with the deck of cards. “I can play that game. I’m certain we could get someone to bet their night’s lodgings.”

                “No-one would be fool enough to do that on a day like this,” said Wahisietel dismissively. Then his brain caught up with what his ears were hearing. “Wait, you play poker?”

                “The Hallowland Ambassador,” Azzanadra replied grimly. “That icyene was a godsend. A drunk _and_ a gambler. A lecher, too. I could get him to talk to no end over a game of cards and a jug of wine.”

                “Do I even want to know?”

                “Probably not.”

                “That makes me think,” said Akthanakos out of nowhere. “We could disguise ourselves as women and sneak into the Saradominist nunnery.”

                There was a long pause as the others considered his proposition. While they ruminated, an entire troupe of priestly cymbal-players marched past them, with tambourines and firecrackers and a lot of decidedly un-Zarosian jumping about.  As the last one finally whirled out of sight like a six-foot tumbleweed, Wahisietel spoke up.

                “I don’t think they let in people just like that, Akh,” he said slowly. “Women or no women. Especially not at this time of the day.”

                “We could tell them we are ladies of the night,” replied Akthanakos, who clearly had given his plan some thought. “And that we are looking to mend our sinful ways.”

                “Would be about time for me, anyway,” said Wahisietel, glancing down on himself. “This body's pushing eighty.”

                “Retirement calls. Az, you could be —” But at that point Akthanakos turned to the Mahjarrat in question, and consequently never finished his sentence, which probably was all for the best.

                “Absolutely no-one present,” said Azzanadra measuredly, “is to dress in drag, engage in prostitution, or to become a bride of Saradomin. And that’s my final word as the most powerful Mahjarrat present.”

                “What about—”

                “No.”

                “Maybe—”

                "No."

                "What if—"

                “No. No tricks. No nunning. No heathenry.”

                “At least it was a plan,” said Akthanakos pettishly. “Any other suggestions?”

                “Well,” said Wahisietel after a while. “We’ve considered violence, gambling, prostitution, and Saradominism. What does that leave us?”

                “Murder.”

                “Arms trade.”

                “People smuggling.”

                “Adultery.”

                “No.”

                “Tax evasion, then.”

                “I’ve never paid any.”

                “Forgery.”

                “What could we—” started Wahisietel, but then suddenly shut up. “ _Of course,_ ” he muttered to himself, _“whydidn’tIthinkofitearlier —_ wait here! _Hisstallmuststillbeopenheneverclosesthebastard_!” And with those words, he disappeared into the market crowd, pushing intently towards a large tent in the north-east corner.

                ***

                Ten minutes later, the three Mahjarrat were crouching in an alleyway, inspecting the cardboard box a sweaty and flustered Wahisietel had brought back.

                The lane around them was jam-packed (the way Kharidian alleys tend to be) with urchins, cutthroats, pickpockets, and other usual suspects, but by keeping the belligerent and stinking bulk of Hatshepsut between themselves and the rest of the street, they could create a placid island of sorts to hold their conference.

                “Forge-Your-Own-Correspondence Kit, by Ali Morrisane Commercial Enterprises,” said Azzanadra, reading from the box cover. “What in the bottomless Void do you think we’re going to use this for?”

                “Exactly what it says on the tin,” said Wahisietel. “Forge a letter of reservation for an inn. ‘We hereby confirm your reservation at the so-and so on the date so-and-so.’ The better class of places do that kind of a thing all the time. If we can prove we booked a room months in advance, they’ll have no choice but to kick out whoever they double-sold it to. Look, there’s a manual and all.”

                “Forge Your Own Correspondence Kit by AMCE, for all your forgery and falsification needs,” Azzanadra read from the sheet of paper.  “Not to be used for forging of banknotes. Failure to use this product correctly may result in a death sentences in five different kingdoms, or a punishment of tarring, feathering, and walking the plank at the Pirates’ Cove.”

                “Good thing we’re going to use it correctly then,” said Wahisietel, as he sorted out the box’s contents on the pavement.

                “Says not to use on Mos’Le Harmless. What’s a Twiblick Night Special?”

                “No idea, said Wahisietel, though a keen observer might have noticed him shuddering visibly. “What does it say?”

                “Here are the instructions,” said Azzanadra. “Enter on the form A —that’s this bit of papyrus here —the recipient’s name, your intended message, and desired signature on slots as indicated in diagram one, using pen B provided in the kit.”

                “This is dry.”

                “Use your own.”

                “Does this thing have a warranty?”

                “A three-year one,” said Akthanakos, who was studying the side of the empty box. “Which ends automatically at the moment of purchase.”

                “I’ve always said you can’t beat a Pollnivnean for a warranty deal,” said Wahisietel.

                “Enter desired date and location before signature,” Azzanadra continued. “Apply stamp next to signature.”

                “Is there anything about the stamp?” Wahisietel asked.

                “After cutting the potato C in half, carve desired symbol on smooth surface.”

                “Ingenious.”

                “Press stamp to ink pad D, stamp form.”

                “Done,” said Wahisietel, inspecting the finished document. “What’s the thing you carved on the stamp, Akh?”

                “A camel.”

                “Naturally.”

                “…To confirm that a room has been reserved for Dr Ali T. Wise, PhD, of Nardah on the twentieth of…” Azzanadra read aloud, eyebrow rising under the brim of his hat. “ _Doctor?”_

“Adds credibility,” said Wahisietel.

               

                ***

                The three of them were standing in the bar of the Desert Rose Inn.

                “For Dr Wise,” the innkeeper read, his brow furrowing, “a room reserved…confirmation of payment received. This is strange, doctor,” he said, leafing through an immense, leather-bound tome. “I seem to have no record of booking a room for you.”

                “It is possible there has been a mistake,” said Wahisietel.

                “Or a copy of the receipt.”

                “These things happen.”

                “Or any memory of anyone from Nardah contacting me at all.”

                “I presume you have a lot of customers.”

                The innkeeper stared hard at him, and was met with the poker face of an over-ten-thousand-year-old divine creation from the deepest depths of the lower planes. Something was not quite right about it all, but he did not wish to make a scene, not on the eve of the Festival of all days.

                He looked at the grey-haired man. Then he looked back down at the letter of reservation. He looked at the man again. Then he looked back down on the stain of fresh ink, which his thumb had smudged from the squiggle stamped on the letter.

                “I do," the innkeeper said as he looked back up, suddenly smiling brightly. “ You have no idea how many. And now that I think, I believe I have a room just for you.”

                Wahisietel beamed.

                ***

                “And at any rate,” he was saying ten minutes later, “a roof on your head is a roof on your head.”

                “You tell me,” said Azzanadra, adjusting the ewe he was using as a headrest.

                “Warm too,” said Wahisietel. “And dry.”

                “Except those bits that are damp, and steaming.”

                “Well, you can’t avoid that with goats.”

                Wahisietel took one last look around the stable. It was warm indeed, and mostly dry, and mostly quiet save for the occasional congested _ba-ah-ah_ from a sleepy sheep. To his left was Akthanakos, sleeping with his back against the imperious mass of Hatshepsut. To his right was Azzanadra, who — on the basis that the weak ought to serve the strong — had arranged some of the stable’s fluffier inhabitants into a bed of sorts. Currently, his footrest was gently nibbling at his boots.

                “Either way,” Wahisietel said at last, “all’s well that ends well. That’s what I always say.” Then he bent down to blow out the oil lamp the innkeeper had been kind enough to give them. “G’night.”

                “G’night.”

                “G’night.”

                _“Hruugh.”_

“Bloody Kharidians, to be honest.”

But then there was nothing but silent, warm, softly caprine darkness.


	4. Meanwhile, in Another Universe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An addendum to Al-Kharid.  
> Meanwhile in another timeline, a butterfly flaps its wings.

 

                “We could tell them we are ladies of the night,” replied Akthanakos, who clearly had given his plan some thought. “And that we are looking to mend our sinful ways.”

                 “Would be about time for me, anyway,” said Wahisietel, glancing down on himself. “This body is pushing eighty.”

                “Retirement calls. Az, you could be —” But at that point Akthanakos turned to the Mahjarrat in question, and consequently never finished his sentence, which probably was all for the best.

                Meanwhile, in another universe and another timeline, another Akthanakos spotted a very interesting butterfly flapping past him, and as a result never turned his head. As he watched it flutter on, he concluded —

                “…red-haired and fiery.”

                In the same universe, another Azzanadra — gazing after the same butterfly, thinking about something else — shrugged in absent-minded approval. By the time his brain caught up with him, it was already too late.

               

                ***

                "Akthanakos Atelajarrat," what in the name of the fires of Infernus are those things?"

                "Harem pants."

                "No, those. Those… _items_."

                "They're called pasties, Wahisietel."

                "But _tassels?_ ”

                "Fetching, aren’t they?”

                "And that?"

                "It's a face veil, Wah. For modesty. Can't start going around immodestly dressed in foreign parts. That would be disrespectful and it might cause Trouble."

                “You don’t half say.”

               

                ***

               

                "Wahisietel, what in the—, what the —, what is Akthanakos doing?”

                "Apparently it’s called Southern Dance,” Wahisietel said glumly. “He says that while it was invented by the Menaphites, the Kharidians like to claim it as their own.”

                "Well, once he’s done with it, I don’t think either of them will be wanting it back.”

                "Speaking of which, Az, what's that you're wearing?"

                "A Real Asgarnian Cancan outfit, for doing The Real Asgarnian Cancan."

                "Oh."

                "That's what it was sold as.”

                "And the hat?"

                "There is no way I’m going to enemy territory without my hat on. Here, pass me another pin. It's a bugger getting it to stay on the wig."

                "How about you, Wah? Do you have your disguise ready?"

                "Yes. No. I'm going as a nun."

                "You can't go as a nun, we're going there to _become_ nuns. That was the plan."

                "Fine, then. I'll get me another one of those Southern Dance outfits."

                "Tassels?"

                "No tassels. You have to draw the line somewhere at my age."

               

                ***

               

                "Is everyone ready? Is everyone dressed? Alright, gentlemen, let us get ready to mend our sinful ways. Set course for the nunnery."

                "Words I never thought I'd hear."

                "Words I never thought I'd say, Akh. Where's Az?"

                "Right here. I only popped by in the market for a little something."

                "What did you get?”

                "A bottle of whiskey."

                "You call this a time for drinking? We're about to undertake a very serious mission."

                "If I'm going to be first a lady of the night and then a bride of Saradomin, you can’t expect me to do it sober, and that's my final word on it, Wahisietel Akhairajarrat. I mean, Fatima Al-Nardahi."

                "Either will do. Here, pour me one too, will you, Red Zara. And one for Queen Bactriana."

                "Cheers."

                "Cheers."

                “Cheers.”

                "Derrieres up, ladies, let's go be Saradominist."

               

                ***

 

                "What is it, private?"

                "Three intoxicated female impersonators, sir. They were caught trying to break in to the abbey."

                "Is that so?"

                "Yes, sir. They were in the process of climbing over the front wall, when a sister who was still up praying spotted them from the chapel door and raised alarm."

                "Good grief."

                "Also, sir, the red-haired one resisted arrest by trying to bite an officer's face."

                "Feisty."

                "He also kept screaming about being...let's see 'anarchmazharat', whatever that is, and 'the goddamned ponit...pontif...frankly, sir, I didn't catch all of it."

                "Doesn't matter, private. Throw them in the drunk tank with the rest."

                "Sir."

                "Bloody tourists."

 


	5. The River

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometime later at the River Lum.   
> Nota bene: This is the first chapter I ever wrote of the Road Trip. Hence, there is quite a lot of time missing between this and the departure from Nardah.

                The big wheel beat the water, the engine let off gusts of steam and smoke, and the coal barge continued its way up the wide, meandering Lum. After the watermill the houses had become scarcer, and now on both banks spread a patchwork of open fields and meadows, dotted about here and there with ancient stone cottages. It was a slow, soft summer’s day, and only the gentlest breeze waved the tender wheat, bringing with it the scent of lilac in late bloom.

                At the place where the stream makes a slight bend towards the north-west, the bargeman — who for the sake of precision was in fact a barge-dwarf — turned down the speed and reached for his lunch pail. The bargeman’s name was Venk, and he worked taking coal from the mines in the seacoast to the foundries and smithies up the creek. He had been recently employed in this position by his brother-in-law, who owned the vessel and two others like it, not to mention a share in the new Dorgesh-Kaan railway, and a rather smart house in West Keldagrim. Venk, who did not own any such things, did not think much of his job, and he certainly did not think much of his brother-in-law either. As an act of defiance towards him, Venk had rubbed mud all over the sign attached to the barge’s side, reducing “Godrunk’s Transport Company” to “drunk’s-ort-any.”

                The sun was long past the zenith, and Venk, who had taken off from the swamp mines at dawn, had not had time to eat since. Now he was safely in deep, wide water, with no other boats in sight, and could finally unwrap his sandwiches. (Corned rat and pickled mushroom on sourdough; smoked cavefish and limpwurt relish on rye.) Occupied as he was with them, he did not notice the man on the riverbank.

                “Hello!” The greeting rang loud and clear. Venk looked up, mentally cursing whoever interrupted his luncheon, and saw the stranger. He was standing at the waterline some way ahead, in the shadow of a clump of willow-trees. He was waving vigorously.

                “Hello to yourself,” Venk called back, unwilling to enter any kind of a conversation.

                “Where are you headed, friend?” the man shouted, his voice echoing. The barge was now drawing closer to the osiers, and although Venk still often had trouble telling big people from one another, he could see that both the man’s face and his clothes marked him as a foreigner to these parts. He was indeterminably old, grey-haired and-bearded, and clad in the loose-fitting garb of a desert-dweller.  On his shoulder hung a small satchel, seemingly his only luggage.

                “Edgeville,” Venk replied, trying to keep his answers as short as possible.

                “Excellent!” The man exclaimed. “Are you taking passengers, by any chance? It would be awfully convenient if you could give us a ride up to the bridge at Gunnarsgrunn!”

                “No!” Venk shrieked, more abruptly than he had intended to. “I mean, yes, I would mind it very much! I can’t stop for anyone! I have to get this load to the foundry by Caistleday!” He stopped, having almost added “if I don’t want to be yelled at by my brother-in-law.”

                “There is no need to stop for me, friend,” the man shouted. The barge had almost reached him now. “I can swim over there just fine!” And before Venk could protest, the stranger had taken off his boots and jacket, and was wading into the river. With speed and dexterity that belied his age, he had slipped into the water. And holding his possessions cautiously above his head, he swam over to the barge.

                “Careful, careful now!” Venk cried. “You’ll get sucked into the tow!” And abandoning his much-longed-for sandwiches, he rushed to the side, and reached out to drag the stranger on board, almost falling off himself in the process. When the man — soaked to the skin, dripping all over the place — was finally safely on the deck, Venk had to sit down to catch his breath.  As soon as he had done so, however, he sprung up again to make a mad dash for the helm, for he had almost run into a reed-thicket.  _“Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear,”_ he thought to himself, as startled mallards flew out of the bulrushes, squawking angrily, and  _“hang big people”_ and  _“what will Godrunk say.”_ Then, as the barge returned to midstream and the danger blew over, it occurred to him that Godrunk need never know, and if he was taking passengers on his own shift, it was none of Godrunk’s concern anyway.

                “Wonderful, wonderful,” the stranger said, picking rotting reed-leaves from his pantlegs, as if nothing was out of the ordinary. “Very decent of you to do this, we were already worried…” Then he turned towards the bank, and cried:

                “It is safe! Get on with it, the pair of you!”

                So far, Venk had assumed that the “us” and “we” the stranger had used were a colloquial way to refer to himself. But as he watched, from the willows emerged another man, this one dressed as if he slept in ditches, with a heavy rucksack on his back. Before Venk ever had the time to react, the man had rushed into the stream, and in alarmingly few strokes he had cleared the distance to the boat.

         For a moment, the only thing visible was a pair of hands holding on to the side of the vessel, and a faded, broad-brimmed hat with two large feathers stuck in the band. Then, in one smooth motion, like a cork shot out of a bottle, the man pulled himself on board. He knelt there, drenched with muddy water, and glared at Venk as if the dwarf had intruded on  _his_  craft uninvited, instead of the other way around. Without a word to either one of them, he took off his rucksack and sat down. Overwhelmed with surprise as Venk was, the  _thunk_ the backpack had made registered in his brain. It sounded heavy. Way too heavy to swim with, in a current most of all.

                “Say,” he started, “that rucksack must have-“But before he could finish, the first man called to the riverbank again:

                “What are you waiting for? It’s alright, you can come on now!”

          Something golden flickered in the trees ahead, the hanging branches parted, and Venk was certain that he was daydreaming. On the shore had appeared a third man, this one clad in flowing, saffron-yellow robes. He was very tall and very thin, but apart from that it was very hard to say anything of his looks, as his face was concealed by a scarf made of the same material as his clothes. It went about the crown in many layers, and was wrapped intricately around the rest of his head, leaving only his eyes visible. In his right hand he held a leash, and at the end of a leash was a camel.

                Slow as in a dream, man and beast waded into the creek — _He cannot, it cannot, it’s not possible,_ Venk’s mind went —and side by side they swam to the barge.   _You can’t get that animal out of the water, and if you try, this whole vessel will collapse and we all end up at the bottom of the Lum with two tons of coal._ But the man cleared his way overboard just as the previous one had, and then something happened. Sunlight hit Venk’s eyes, the vessel tipped dangerously, and there was an almighty splash and a loud cry of  _“Hruuugh!”_ But when the dancing afterimages cleared from his vision, on the deck of the barge there were him, three human men, and a very wet camel.

                “That,” he managed to say. “That is a  _camel,”_ he breathed, unable to contain himself any longer.

                “ _Ugh-thankee,”_ replied the robed man, glancing briefly at him.

                “You are welcome,” Venk replied, still lost.

                “We are welcome on the boat then?” The first man said, settling comfortably against the coal heap. He had taken off his soaked trousers, and was sitting in the sun quiet unabashedly in his underclothes. “Wonderful, wonderful. You have no idea how much trouble you have saved the three of us.” The third man, who had somehow got the camel to lie down, uttered something in a language Venk didn’t understand.

 _“The four of us,_  of course,” the first man corrected himself. “I say, are these your sandwiches? They look quite delicious.” In his hand —miraculously unsoaked and untrodden — was the greasepaper packet containing Venk’s lunch. He accepted it without a word, staring at it as if he had never seen it in his life. “You eat now, my friend,” the man said. “I’ll keep a hand on the helm.” For a moment, Venk felt unreal. Then a fear began to mount in his mind, his eternal, unceasing fear of Godrunk. But as suddenly as the thought materialised, it was eclipsed by another: The strangers were getting off at the village, and his brother-in-law was in Edgeville. And should he somehow materialize downriver, what could he say? What would someone like Godrunk say if he saw them? But suddenly Venk knew exactly what he would say to Godrunk’s stupid, dumbstruck face. 

                _“Why, these three fellows were in a bit of trouble, and I thought I’d give them a ride. Magnificent animal that camel of theirs, isn’t it?”_ And he almost wished they’d run into Godrunk.

    So, as the sun continued her journey west, the little barge continued its way up the river. In the bow the grey-haired man stood at the helm, puffing on a long clay pipe and steering as if he had been messing about in boats all his life. On one side of him Venk sat eating his lunch, turning from time to time to take a fearful look at the camel drowsing atop the coal heap. On the other sat the vagabond who had dried out preternaturally fast, and who appeared to be brooding. The third man had laid down on the side of the boat as if reclining on a divan, and trailed his fingers in the dark, swirling water. He did not talk either, but he was evidently enjoying himself.

          Thus, mile by mile, the big wheel pushed them up the creek, while the sky overhead slowly turned golden and rose. And as the shadows grew long and dark, the cicadas and birds hiding in the lush greenness of the waterside began their evening songs, and the wind — the cooling, gentle wind that carried the scent of lilac and honeysuckle — whispered its secrets in the reeds.


End file.
